Skip to contents

Retrieve and Save Mars Rover Photos

Source: R/get_mars_rover_photos_and_metadata.R
get_mars_rover_photos_and_metadata.Rd

Queries NASA's Mars Rover Photos API to retrieve photos taken by a specified rover on a given Earth date. Optionally saves the images to a folder on the user's Desktop.

Usage

get_mars_rover_photos_and_metadata(
  rover,
  earth_date,
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY",
  folder_name = NULL
)

Arguments

rover

Character. The name of the Mars rover. Must be one of the following:

  • "curiosity"

  • "opportunity"

  • "spirit"

  • "perseverance"

earth_date

Character. The Earth date to query in "YYYY-MM-DD" format. Default is "2024-04-01".

api_key

Character. NASA API key. Defaults to "DEMO_KEY", but a personal API key is recommended.

folder_name

Character or NULL. If provided, images will be saved in a folder with this name on the user's Desktop. If NULL, images are only displayed and not saved.

Value

A data frame containing metadata about the retrieved photos, including photo ID, sol (Martian day), camera name, image source URL, Earth date, and rover name.

Details

The function prints each retrieved image and associated metadata to the console. If a folder name is specified, images are saved to the Desktop inside the given folder. Only images taken on the specified date are returned; if no images exist, the function stops with an error.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Retrieve and save photos taken by Curiosity on June 3, 2015
mars_photos_metadata <- get_mars_rover_photos_and_metadata(
  rover = "curiosity",
  earth_date = "2015-06-03",
  api_key = "DEMO_KEY",
  folder_name = "MarsPhotos"
)
} # }